memse transforms a real-valued
time series (from the specified input-file, or from the standard input if
input-file is specified as ‘‘-’’; input-file must be in text form) into a power
spectrum (on the standard output). memse is designed to be used in much
the same way as fft(1)
; it accepts the same input, produces output in the
same format, and accepts many of the same options used with fft.

Unlike
fft, which bases its spectral estimates on the discrete Fourier transform,
memse uses the maximum entropy (all poles) method, also known as autoregressive
(AR) spectral estimation. This method models the spectrum by a series expansion
in which the free parameters are all in the denominators of its terms;
hence each term may represent a pole (corresponding to infinite power
spectral density within an infinitely narrow frequency band). By contrast,
Fourier analysis models the spectrum by a series expansion in which the
free parameters are all in the numerators; hence each term in a Fourier
series may represent a zero. All-poles models are particularly useful for
analysis of spectra which have discrete peaks (in the terminology of optical
spectra, ‘‘lines’’).

In order to use memse, you should have some idea of the
order of the model you wish to use (i.e., the number of poles). Although
this may be any number up to the number of input points, the number of
poles generally should not exceed the square root of the number of input
points, and usually should be considerably less than that number. Large
numbers of poles lead to lengthy computations (much slower than the FFT)
in which accumulated roundoff error becomes a serious problem. This problem
may also occur if the length of the input series becomes excessive. The
recommended way to use memse is to begin by using fft, in order to estimate
the model order. Typically this should be a small multiple of the number
of peaks which you believe are present. Beware! memse will produce smooth
spectral estimates for whatever model order you choose -- and they may be
totally bogus if you choose incorrectly. Varying the model order can help
to weed out some spurious features, but use extreme care when interpreting
memse output given noisy input.

Options are:

-blow high [ low high ... ]

Print
power in the specified bands. Each low and high pair specifies the low
and high frequency boundaries of the band of interest, in Hz. Multiple
bands may be specified following a single -b option; only the last -b option
has any effect. Also see -s below.

-ffrequency

Show the center frequency
for each bin in the first column. The frequency argument specifies the
input sampling frequency; the center frequencies are given in the same
units.

-h

Print a usage summary.

-nn

Produce exactly n power estimates, evenly
spaced in frequency from 0 up to half the input sampling frequency inclusive.
The default depends on the length of the input series; it is designed
to match fft’s defaults, to make it easy to compare outputs. You may wish
to use values of n which are higher than the default in order to improve
your estimates of the locations of sharp features in the spectrum; since
this is not possible using fft, this feature is one of the main advantages
of memse.

-on

Use an nth order model (i.e., up to n poles). Default: the
square root of the number of input samples.

-P

Generate a power spectrum
(print squared magnitudes).

-s

Print power in a standard set of frequency
bands of interest for HRV analysis.

-wwindow-type

Apply the specified window
to the input data. window-type may be one of: ‘Bartlett’, ‘Blackman’, ‘Blackman-Harris’,
‘Hamming’, ‘Hanning’, ‘Parzen’, ‘Square’, and ‘Welch’. The ‘Square’ window type is
equivalent to using no window at all; this is also variously known as
a rectangular or Dirichlet window.

-z

Add a constant to each input sample,
chosen such that the mean value of the entire series is zero.

-Z

Set the
mean value of the inputs to zero as for -z, and detrend the series (set
its mean first derivative to zero). This is equivalent to subtracting a
best-fit (by least squares) line from the input data.